to find the summit, cloud rolling in, the blue streak of the sea and horizon a floating balance line against the broken slope. Four hours up to the crater, five hours down, hurting. Lunch in the high atmosphere, island slabs in the ocean, beers and biscuits down in the warden’s office, licking wounds. The volcano visited. Another glimpse of the secret energies, the planet’s pathways and the torrents that drive us on to make, go and see.
on the islands in the sky. But will my ascent be thwarted? Do the whales also chart their passings by a breaching glimpse of its white cap.
when the towing paths get busy with joggers and tourists, takes the David Jones up to a quiet stretch in the Heyfords. He asks me to visit him at the Rock of Gibraltar, then after the jars he points to the tiller, take us out, Henry pal, find us the quiet.
and I tread water in D’s pool.
of island gather here, this house squared with high trees and the rim of the sea just proud above the fields. I read Frankenstein, the child rejected, and dream of the volcano hump of Pico, the climbs and breezes to come.
to the breakwater and back, scared the hell out of me, taste of the sea gives me renewed appetite for the land.
it’s crossed my mind a few times. But I can’t let myself go with it, I’m too stamped through like Ida Arnold. Doggedly me for better or worse. I had a friend who scoffed at the idea of seasonal reimaginings of self, he confessed he did it by the minute, by the second. For him a thousand layers of new paint and colour went on, but his old faults and habits would scrape and flake to surface show. Any heavy knock or upset would reveal the cast metal. He wrote poems that flashed the first colours too.
almost fills the empty chair. Almost.
as the day’s heat oozes skywards. The air’s sluggish over the Brize Norton to Chilterns plain, here the clouds hang and the asthma cases rocket. All Oxford veterans dream of end-game sea breezes and wave gazing, the littoral crinkles and dips in the Earth crust, the lapping blue lens. One day, if I ever reach Summertown escape velocity, I’ll drag this bucket to the beach, put the car on bricks and kick off my reality boots. But I’ve another decade ahead of Broad Street drop-offs, Moo-moo’s and Covered Market bangers, the Rose and Crown handle or straight glass dilemma, off to Parkway on that which rolls and trying not to fluff my lines at garden parties. And I’ll keep dreaming of two hundred perfect pages.
are my vistas, my horizon sweep. I flash fag-end kerbs and plated drinks cans, roll by the builder vans and dozing minicab drivers. Away from here at every point there’s mayhem and change but my corner of Blighty feels static in space, aspic-set. The road beyond whispers and coos over the sound of my tyres.
